Illegal TV Platforms Have Become a Professional Business Undermining the Pay TV Market

Video piracy in Croatia is no longer a marginal issue or a matter of users occasionally watching an illegal stream. It has evolved into an increasingly organised parallel business that is putting real pressure on the legitimate television market. Ivan Benc, Director of TV Products and Content at Hrvatski Telekom, warns that the situation has deteriorated in recent years and that the market is no longer dealing with improvised pirate services, but with professionalised platforms selling access to vast libraries of channels and content for a monthly fee.

“The situation in Croatia is worrying and getting worse,” says Benc. According to Hrvatski Telekom’s estimates, based on several research approaches, “between 100,000 and 150,000 users” in Croatia regularly use illegal TV solutions. This, he stresses, is not about someone briefly visiting a website to watch something for free. It is about users paying continuously for services that operate outside the legal content distribution chain.

The problem is more complex because many users do not fully understand that they are using an illegal service. Some assume that if they pay for access, the service must be legitimate. In reality, these offers often promise thousands of channels and access to content for which rights have not been properly cleared. “When someone offers 10,000 channels for five or ten euros a month, without a clear channel list, that should immediately raise suspicion,” Benc says.

One of the clearest warning signs is the way such services are accessed. Legal platforms, whether MAXtv, Netflix or other OTT services, have their own applications, a branded user experience and clear terms of service. Pirate services, by contrast, often provide users with a code to be entered into a generic third-party application, with no transparent identity for the provider. “With pirate solutions, there is usually no application from the company that supposedly sold you the service,” Benc explains.

For telecom operators, piracy is not only a question of lost revenue. Benc points out that pay TV is often wrongly perceived as a highly profitable business in which operators keep most of the money. In practice, he says, it is a low-margin model because a large share of revenue is passed on to content owners, rights holders, production companies, and other participants in the value chain, as well as to regulatory and fiscal obligations. “Pay TV is a very low-margin business,” Benc says, adding that piracy is now “undermining the foundations of the entire business model.”

In fighting illegal services, Croatia should look to emerging European practices, he argues. Benc cites Greece, Italy and Spain as markets where systems are being developed in which authorised organisations report illegal streams and operators are required to block access within a defined period. That period, he notes, is becoming shorter, moving from several days toward only a few minutes. “That is the direction in which we would like to see Croatia and its legislation move,” he says.

However, Benc warns that enforcement cannot work if it is fragmented. If one operator blocks access to an illegal stream while another does not, the effect is limited. A coordinated approach across the market is therefore essential, together with a clearer legal framework enabling faster and more effective action. “There needs to be a joint approach by all telecom operators in the market, because it cannot be that one acts and another does not,” Benc says.

Artificial intelligence could play a significant operational role in that process. Benc does not see AI as a replacement for people, but as a tool that can accelerate the identification of illegal sources, scan large numbers of websites and digital traces, and help detect pirate networks earlier. “Artificial intelligence has a major role in detection and alerting,” he says. He adds that Hrvatski Telekom, like other telecom operators, is already testing AI-based solutions across different parts of its business.

Still, Benc does not expect piracy to disappear completely. The realistic goal, he argues, is to bring it down to a level that no longer threatens the legal market or the sustainability of investment in high-quality content. “We will be fighting pirates from now on, forever,” he concludes. For the industry, this means that content protection, regulation, technology-based monitoring and user education will become a permanent part of the television business, rather than an occasional response to isolated incidents.